One of the hats I wear is recording engineer for the weekly live music show Pipeline! on WMBR 88.1fm. Every week a band from somewhere in New England (usually from the Boston area) comes down to the studio and plays live on the air. It’s a ton of fun, both to listen to and engineer!

Recently, it got even more interesting: a couple months ago the guys from Echoplanar Films started coming down and filming some of the sets. There’s already a few clips up on the Pipeline! site in the video category, and as time goes on I’ll post clips here as well as over there.

Below is a clip from the very first set they shot, by the band Tulsa.

Click To Play

Late notice, but there’s a great show for a great cause tonight at PA’s Lounge:

A Breast Cancer Benefit for Mona Elliot with…

Helms
Black Helicopter
Seana Carmody
Vox Humana

$10, 9pm.

More soon…

Shrinking Islands are playing a show at Great Scott this coming Wednesday.

Who are Shrinking Islands? Right here:
They Don’t Watch Me – from the album “In the Black Carpet” (buy it here)

Why mention it? Besides being great friends of mine, they’re busy recording their debut release for Inman Street Records, due in a few weeks (hopefully).

Here’s the rest of the bill for Wednesday’s show:

Hands & Knees
My Teenage Stride
A Sunny Day In Glasgow

We headed over to the Middle East down last night for the screening of the new Jesus Lizard DVD… shot in Boston on October 4, 1994 at the Venus de Milo. Both that show and the club predated my arrival in this fair city, though I did manage to see the band twice during their lifespan.

Ahh, nostalgia.

Turnout for the DVD showing was really weak, but the DVD was a great representation of a Jesus Lizard show. Here’s a sample:

Plenty of other Jesus Lizard clips on YouTube for your enjoyment, and you can buy the DVD online at Newbury Comics.

TONS of shows coming up this week in Boston.  Here’s some of the better ones:

Thursday June 7th – Jack Wright, Agnes Palier, Olivier Toutlemonde
Pierre Menard Gallery, 10 Arrow St in Harvard Square, Cambridge. 8 pm.

Friday June 8th – Jandek (with Eli Keszler, Jorrit Dijkstra, and Greg Kelley)
Boston ICA, 7 pm. presented by The Critique of Pure Reason

Friday June 8th – Sunburned, Birds Of Delay, Emeralds, Astronaut, Puritan Agenda
Nom D’Artiste, 25 Edinboro St. #5 in Chinatown. 9 pm.

Friday June 8th – Major Stars, UV Protection, Helms
The Milky Way,  403-405 Centre St. in Jamaica Plain.  10pm.

Saturday June 9th – The Divorced
The Distillery,  516 E 2nd St. in Boston. 8pm.

Sunday June 10th – Lexie Mountain Boys and others
Infrasound loft.  Call Weirdo Records (617-666-VILE) for details.

Monday June 11th – Melt-Banana, Doomriders, Neptune
Middle East Downstairs, 472/480 Mass Ave in Cambridge. 9pm.

Friday June 15th – Warmer Milks
Twisted Village,  12 B Eliot Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge. 617-354-6898.

Our friends over at The Paper Cities have just released Holograd, a limited-edition (100 copies) CDR by the band Dania Shapes. I’ve been listening to more ambient/electronic stuff lately, and they’re very much in that vein, though they can get a bit noisy at times. While I’ve never seen then live, I’ve been enjoying the songs up on their Myspace page for quite a while; of the current batch that are up I’m partial to “NEST 5900″ and “October”.

The CDR can be purchased at The Paper Cities website.

UPDATE:  Battles and Singer have now played in Boston.  I went to the show and have posted my thoughts over here.

—–
I’ve been a huge US Maple fan for years. When I first heard them sometime in the mid-90′s, I was absolutely floored; the music they made was so alien, yet amazingly compelling. The first time I saw them live my brain melted out of my ears. They were that great.

Battles is a more recent band that I’ve been really impressed with. Their initial EP’s melded instrumental rock with electronics in a very satisfying way. I’ve only heard a couple songs off their new album – I haven’t picked it up yet, but will soon – but the addition of (heavily effected) vocals merely raises the bar.

What’s the connection? I missed Battles when they played in Boston a month or two ago, so when I saw a listing for their upcoming show Wednesday July 18th at the Paradise, I was happy.

AND! I noticed one other thing! Opening up for them is a band called Singer. According to the listing, Singer features “Rob Lowe, Adam Vida, Ben Vida, and Todd Rittman”. Todd Rittman is one of the original members of US Maple; Adam Vida was brought in to play drums on their last album and tour.

Much googling insued, but there’s scant information about this new band available online. The best I could do is a post on the messageboard of Modern Radio, a small record label out of Minnesota. Someone who appears to be Adam Vida writes:

“AJV posted this on May 25th, 2007 at 02:01:41 pm
Speaking of polarizing bands… Here’s a new one.
SINGER:
Todd Rittmann (US Maple)
Adam Vida (US Maple)
Ben Vida (Town and Country, Bird Show)
Rob Lowe (90 Day Men, Lichens)

We’ve been invited to tour with Battles in July. We’ll be in MPLS (where Ben and I grew up) on July 11th, 2007 at Triple Rock. You gotta see Rittmann is bringing to this… that’s all I’ll say.

Best, Adam”

Follow this link and scroll all the way down to the bottom to see the post.

I couldn’t find a myspace page or any other info. If anyone knows anything, please leave a note in the comments; suffice it to say I’m quite excited to hear what these gentlemen have to offer!

Just saw that White Mice are opening for Skinny Puppy. I never was a SP fan, but good for White Mice – it’s exposure to an audience that may well be receptive to their performance. I’ve seen White Mice a couple times before, and if you’re into metal/noise they’re a solid band. Their live shows can be quite entertaining, and somewhat unnerving. How else do you describe a trio of satanic-looking mice totally rocking out?

The Boston show is June 7th at the Avalon.

I definitely came late to the party that was Read Yellow. For years I’d see their name around town, saw their CD’s here and there, and never thought twice about it. That all changed when they played Pipeline! this past January; they laid down some rock that was fierce, energetic, and (dare I say?) somewhat noisy and angular.

I saw them live at the Middle East soon after, and was really impressed by the manic energy they brought to the stage. Sometimes I feel that bands forget they’re entertainers; these four sure didn’t.

They’ve had an album in the can since the middle of last year, waiting for a label to pick it up and release it. You may know the rest of the story; instead of an album, we get Read Yellow is breaking up.

Old news, though. So what motivated this post? I’ve recently been listening to the “Knocks From the Underground: The Best of Underplayed Boston” compilation again, after having snagged it at the release show a few months back. There’s a bunch of good stuff on it, but the once song that kept jumping out at me was Read Yellow’s “Soul Sister”. It jumped out a lot, actually; for a while I played the song endlessly.

“Soul Sister” was recorded during the sessions for the new album, as was “Pia Zadora”; you can listen to both songs on the band’s myspace page. If those two songs are any indication, that new album was easily going to be their best.

Oh well.

Inman Street Records Presents:

Most Bitter
Antiques
Sprouls

Monday May 7th at 9pm
at Charlie’s Kitchen – 10 Eliot St, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA

A solid 3-band bill at Charlie’s, what better way to cap off a Monday? Most Bitter will be selling CD’s of the album linked above, if downloading mp3′s isn’t your thing. I’ve never seen Antiques or Sprouls live before, and I’m definitely looking forward to it. See you there!